Brother's Keeper
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Mac's perspective on his fight with OC and the aftermath of it. Focuses on Mac, OC, Herb, and Rizzo.
1. Chapter 1

War with Trolls

"_To live is to war with trolls."—Henrik Ibsen_

Sitting on the bench as he watched the line in front of him run through the assigned drill, Rob tried to mentally note any corrections Herb handed out, so that he wouldn't repeat any mistakes that his teammates were unfortunate enough to make, but his mind, foggy as the condensation on a cool mug of beer, could not perform this basic function with any alacrity. Clearly, he had let himself have a little too much fun last night, but that was probably because he couldn't fully accept that what everyone called the best years of his life—his college years—were over, and it was now no longer considered normal or desirable for him to top off an evening by drinking bourbon out of a shoe that wasn't even necessarily his own.

As if to prove the point that he would have to do more with his post-collegiate career than descend into rampant alcoholism, his typical hangover cure—a freezing shower, a black coffee, and an Advil—had been about as effective as closing the barn door after the stallion had escaped. Now everything was too loud and too bright, and the last two ingredients of his homemade hangover remedy were swirling around in his otherwise empty stomach in a way that made him pray he would not do anything as undignified as vomit all over the ice.

He wished that he had eaten a granola bar back in his room, but he never liked to have breakfast even when he wasn't hungover. It wasn't that he disliked breakfast foods—he actually rather enjoyed them—but he just didn't want to have them any time before noon. In his view, one he was convinced was shared by university students the world over, there should only be two meals a day: brunch and dinner. People who insisted on getting up in time for a healthy breakfast and being all smug about that particular dietary decision should, he firmly believed, be taxed by the government at twice the rate of everyone else.

"That's it! Pick it up!" Herb shouted at the line on the ice, and Rob massaged his delicate temples, wishing that he could find a rock to crawl under to drown out all the noise and light, or that failing, crush himself under. That at least would end his cursed headache. A boulder was a more powerful cure than Advil every time. "That's it! Kick it out!"

_Oh, Lord, this is going to be a long practice,_ Rob thought, closing his eyes against the brightness of the lights reflected off the ice. How blinding that was he had never noticed before, but he was usually more observant about things even he wouldn't typically see (and he was a very detail-oriented person) when he was recovering from tipping back a few too many glasses at the bar. Being drunk, he decided, provided him with his best insight into how it might have felt to be a mad artistic genius like Van Gogh. This was all just part of his higher education to make him a better rounded individual.

"Look for the pass," Herb instructed at the top of his voice, and Rob gave into the temptation to open his eyes to discover what his coach was yelling about now. A second later, he realized that Herb was mad at Mark Johnson for either not taking or not seeing a pass. "Come on, hit him with a pass."

_Bad luck, Mark_, Rob noted inwardly, sympathizing with the roommate he had been assigned because of where their last names appeared in the alphabet. Mark wasn't a hard person to empathize with, even when you were blasted out of your cranium. His blue eyes made him seem innocent and fragile, even though he was one of the best college hockey players in the country, which meant that he had to be downright dangerous in his own fashion on the ice.

As a roommate, he was unfailingly polite, but he didn't insist on talking all the time. Another one of his chief virtues, in Rob's opinion, was that he didn't confuse the floor of their dorm room with a dresser, or, worse still, a hamper, and he didn't have any annoying sleeping habits: snoring, sleep-walking, or sleep-talking. As far as random roommates went, Mark Johnson was la crème de la crème, at least among a crop of college hockey players.

"Look for the pass! Come on, hit him with a pass!" Herb was screaming louder than ever now, and Mark seemed to be in some hockey zone where he was oblivious to anyone he was not dodging on his path toward goal. This would end well, because Herb loved having his advice completely ignored by his players.

Practice was only going to get noisier, and Rob should probably just accept that it was going to be even worse than the one, as a Gopher, where he had showed up with a black eye, because, loosened by a few brews, he had, for reasons he could not understand when he was sober, repeatedly dared one of his football buddies to punch him in the face. When he remembered to say his prayers, Rob was still thanking God that Herb had taken one look at his bruised face and chosen to just file the whole incident under information he didn't need to know about his players.

"Go, Johnson! Outside!" Herb cried, as Mark streaked down the inside of the ice.

"All right, Johnson, hit him on the other side," ordered Herb, using his stick to illustrate his words, as if Mark had listened to the past three—or was it four? Rob couldn't count with any real confidence this morning—commands he had issued.

"Get them up!" Herb added to the defense coming up to confront Mark, apparently recalling that there were other players on ice he was supposed to be barking instructions at. "Look for him."

"Move and hit him, Johnson!" Herb was after Mark for not passing to a line mate again. "He's open."

As Mark, definitely not passing the puck, continued to weave down the ice with a speed and grace Rob couldn't help but admire, Herb snapped, "Center, center. Come on, Johnson!"

By now, Mark's maneuvering had landed him in front of Jim Craig's net, and, a second later, after some more impressive stick handling, his shot had sailed into the goal. Some might have said that Mark's goal was pure luck, but if a player was as consistently lucky as Mark was, that had to be regarded as a certain talent and Rob would want that person on his team. Anyway, he didn't believe that what Mark did on the ice was luck. He thought that it was just some special hockey sense that the Wisconsin boy had either been born with or had honed through hard training.

Of course, Rob didn't expect Herb to be impressed. He could imagine what Brooks would say if he, Rob McClanahan, had sped down the ice and scored that goal. He would say cuttingly for probably the millionth time since they had met four years ago, "You think you're fast, McClanahan? Here's a tip: the puck moves faster if you pass it."

Sometimes, Rob, having a better long term memory than a goldfish, would remember this and pass. Other times, his high school puck-hogging tendencies would dominate his instincts, and he would horde the little black disc like a dragon jealously guarding a cache of gold. Then Herb would chew him out for needing to be told the same thing over and over. He just hoped, for Mark's sake, that Mark was a faster learner than he was. Otherwise, they'd both be hearing a lot of the same stuff all the way to Lake Placid.

"Johnson!" Herb's whistle blew, resounding with enough force inside Rob's head to give him a migraine. As Mark, looking resigned to his fate, skated over to hear whatever criticism Herb had to make, Coach Brooks went on crisply, "That coast-to-coast stuff may work here, but it won't against the teams we'll be playing."

Mark nodded, accepting the reprimand, although Rob was prepared to bet that he had about a hundred more wild cards tucked up his sleeves to show off in future practices, and Herb, determined to keep the practice moving at a blistering pace, said, "Next line up. Let's go. Let's run it again."

Next line up. That included Rob, so now was the moment of truth: the time when he discovered whether he currently had the coordination required to skate, pass, and not throw up. This should be a fun experiment, he thought, as he clambered over the boards, feeling some relief that he had passed this first test without doing a face plant. There were only about a thousand more hurdles for him to jump successfully before he could return to the bench for some water that might flush out his head a little.

"This is a breakout play, gentlemen." Herb repeated the same speel that he had given the previous line up, and Rob reminded himself to focus on the reward of a water break that would come if he could get through this drill without embarrassing himself. "So, please, let's get rid of the puck early."

Rob turned his head to try to get a measure of what Morrow, who should have been on the line beside him, was planning to do, so they could be at least somewhat in sync with each other, and realized instantly that would not be happening, because Jack O'Callahan, one of the BU boys, was standing where Morrow should have been.

His queasy stomach knotting, Rob observed that Jack had a distinctly demonic gleam in his eyes that promised unpleasant surprises and trouble. Unlike Rizzo, O'Callahan was plainly not willing to leave the 1976 NCAA final in the past any time before the world ended, and he looked practically homicidal. It was just Rob's good fortune, since he had apparently been selected as the punchline of some cosmic joke again, to end up paired with a psychopath, or, as the teachers would have euphemistically phrased it in parent conferences, someone who needed to brush up on his social skills.

Bracing himself to be the brunt of whatever mad scheme for vengeance that was brewing in O'Callahan's evil brain, Rob heard Herb shout, "All right, let's go!"

Herb shot out the puck, and, glad to place as much distance between himself and the team maniac as possible, Rob glided off after it, relieved to discover that skating was not as challenging as he had feared in his recovering alcoholic state. In fact, it was easier for him to skate than think right now.

He was circling with the other forwards around the net, trying to create scoring opportunities when O'Callahan rammed into him with all the force and rage of a rampaging rhinoceros. Inertia sent him sprawling onto the ice. The metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth, telling him a second before the pain did that he had bitten his tongue.

Reflexively, because he had felt his teeth bang into each other even through his mouth guard, he ran his tongue along the back of his mouth guard, checking that all his teeth were still present and intact. He had just confirmed that his mouth had suffered no permanent damage when the first indignant gasps of "Oh!" and "Oh, my God!" began to float from the bench, eliminating any doubt Rob might have had about his collision with O'Callahan being a deliberate attack.

"What's O.C. doing?" Rammer demanded, his angry words making the question sound more like an insistence that the violent lunatic who smashed into his own teammate be cut immediately. Mike Ramsey had only just finished his freshman year at the U, so he had no memories of the bitter bench-clearing brawl between the Gophers and the Terriers at the NCAA finals in 1976. To him, that year was practically ancient history. Rammer made Rob feel old, something that he didn't think should ever happen to a twenty-one-year-old.

"That was cheap," put in Neal Broten, another player who had just completed his freshman year at the U. "He didn't have the puck."

"What the hell are you hitting like that for?" snapped Phil Verchota, who sounded as though he wanted to knock O'Callahan to the ice, and Rob might have smiled if his mouth didn't hurt so much. Minnesota boys always stuck together like glue, so to mess with one was basically to mess with them all, and there were more players in this rink from Minnesota than Massachusetts. If Jack wanted a re-match of the 1976 brawl, he should have chosen a better place—one where he had more allies.

"That's bush league, O.C.," Buzz Schneider added reprovingly, pulling his head out of the cloud it normally resided in long enough to show some anger.

"Nice hit, O.C.," remarked Dave Silk, a BU boy who had a smug smirk in his tone, and Rob thought resentfully, _Screw you, Silk, and the skates you came in on_. He had no idea how Rizzo, a friendly and seemingly sane individual, had managed to survive being on a team with O'Callahan and Silk. It was probably a testament to Rizzo's character that he had not done what a less resilient person would have under the circumstances: transferred, committed suicide, or gone on a killing spree to rid himself of his more vexing teammates.

Speaking of killing, Rob really wanted to murder Jack O'Callahan this very moment, but he wasn't sure whether it would be wise to rush at the Boston boy with his fists flailing. Rob could feel Herb, as always, watching—those cold eyes burning into Rob's back, either waiting to pass judgment or already delivering a verdict—and he had to think about what Herb wanted to see from him. Herb liked fierce players, but he also appreciated clean ones. He had no time for anyone he perceived as a weakling, but he didn't value people who collected penalty minutes like awards or who tore into teammates as though hockey were a sport for stars instead of teams.

Would Herb rather Rob retaliate and get into a fight with O'Callahan, or would he prefer to see Rob not take the bait and go on skating as if nothing out of line had happened? After four years of playing under Herb, Rob felt he should know the answer to this crucial question, but his fall to the ice, courtesy of the brute O'Callahan, had destroyed the few brain cells he had been left with after last night's binge. Everything was so confusing when your mind was a haze that would not stop spinning.

"Tell your boy to keep his head up, and he won't have to worry." The derisive edge to O'Callahan's ugly, sharp Boston accent made up Rob's mind. When he needed hockey advice from Jack O'Callahan, hell would have frozen over, and they'd be playing hockey there, too.

Now, Rob was irate enough that he did not care that Herb had a front row seat for this confrontation. He no longer was considering his audience, just his own urges and desires. He needed to punch the sneer off Jack O'Callahan's face even if it was the last thing that he did on this team. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

"Let's go," he growled, ignoring Verchota who had asked if he was all right, and surging across the ice until he crashed into O'Callahan. The inexorable laws of physics sent them both wheeling, leaving them clinging onto each other's arms for support. Then, they steadied themselves enough to begin throwing punches at one another's faces, and Rob, seeing that O'Callahan's helmet strap was already undone, took advantage of this, aiming a blow that sent it clattering to the ice below.

The world shrank to the size of the fists flying at his face, and he only was dimly aware of the shouts of the players who were, by the sound of it, restraining Buzz and Bill Baker from joining the fray. He didn't hear the words of encouragement tossed at him or O'Callahan because he was, despite his struggles, being pushed down onto the ice.

As he hit the ice, Jack's balled hand slammed into his nose. Skin tore, warm blood spurted out of his nostrils, and he could only be grateful that he hadn't heard or felt a crack that might have indicated a broken bone. Now his entire head ached, and he began to feel that getting into a fight while he was hungover ranked at the top of the list of his poor life decisions. If this fight wasn't broken up soon, he might not even have a life anymore. That was how rock bottom stupid his choice was.

This revelation had only just come over him when he felt hands tugging him away from O'Callahan, and, even though he knew that it was in his best interests for the pounding his throbbing head was receiving to be over, he still struggled for one last opportunity to throw a punch at his least favorite teammate ever.

"Well, how about it, boys?" Herb's question was as rough as sandpaper rubbing against an open wound. "Look like hockey to you?"

Finally deciding to give up the fight, at least for today, Rob hoped that O'Callahan would have the sense not to answer this obviously rhetorical question. It was safer and altogether more prudent to just allow Herb to rant whenever the urge overcame him, rather than try to head him off early.

"Looks like a couple of monkeys trying to hump a football to me," continued Herb, and Rob wondered if even Herb knew what that looked like, because Herb had used that simile to describe at least fifty very different things in Rob's time at the U. Of course, Rob tried not to think about this too much, because it gave him nasty mental images that he believed no coach should be permitted to inflict on his impressionable players. "What do you think, Craig?"

"Yeah." Coach Patrick's nonplussed tone made it plain that he didn't understand what he was agreeing to beyond the fact that teammates should not be trading punches in the middle of practice. Everybody was tripped up by Herb's graphic and frankly weird figures of speech, then. It wasn't just a generational gap.

"You want to settle old scores, you're on the wrong team," announced Herb curtly, treating first Jack and then Rob to his most disapproving glare. Both of them went on glaring at one another, because that was safer than returning Herb's furious stare. "We move forward starting right now! We start becoming a team _right now_!"

Here, Herb smashed his stick against the ice, spraying chips of ice in the air, to emphasize his point. Then, because nobody could argue that he lacked a flare for the dramatic, he lowered his voice as he went on to provide what he doubtlessly wanted to become the team's mission statement.

"Skating," he said, gliding over to lock eyes with Rob, who could only meet his stern gaze for a second. Ducking his head, Rob thought that he knew he was on this team mainly because he was one of the fastest and smoothest skaters in college hockey, so Herb would definitely be expecting a lot from him in the skating department, and he did not want to disappoint Coach Brooks again anytime soon.

"Passing. Flow." To Rob's relief, Herb skated over to skewer O'Callahan with his gaze, and then returned to the center ice to finish his lecture. "And creativity. That is what this team is all about, gentlemen. Not old rivalries."

He paused, as if to permit this final prohibition ample time to sink into his players' brains, and then suggested in a deceptively mild tone, "So, why don't we start with some introductions? You know, get to know each other a bit. Where you're from. Who you are. Go ahead."

Rob thought this sounded like an incredible waste of time and oxygen. He and Jack already knew who each other were and where one another were from. That was why they had come to blows in the first place. If there was anything Rob hated more than a circle introduction to those who didn't know him, it was a pointless introduction circle to people who knew him. Judging by the contemptuous expression on O'Callahan's face, he didn't regard Herb's idea much more highly than Rob did, which meant that they now had one thing in common, and the universe would be imploding soon.

Perhaps seeing this and realizing that he would have better luck convincing someone who had played for him for four years and had witnessed on many occasions how dangerous a wrathful Herb Brooks could be, Herb glanced proddingly at Rob, silently ordering him to open the introductions.

Desperate for a way out of this stupid activity or at least a chance to stall it, Rob looked at Verchota, who returned his gaze in a manner that clearly stated, "Just bite the bullet, Robbie."

Rolling his eyes, Rob decided that if he had to obey a dumb command, he didn't have to do it with alacrity. There would be no polite smiles, handshakes, or "pleased to meet you." There wouldn't even be complete sentences, just fragments. He would do the absolute minimum Herb had required; he wouldn't act like he was meeting somebody respectable for a round of golf at a country club when he was actually addressing the psychopath Jack O'Callahan.

"Rob McClanahan," he answered flatly, directing his words more toward Herb than to O'Callahan, because he wanted to talk to the BU boy as little as possible. "St. Paul, Minnesota."

Or, more precisely, North Oaks, but only people already familiar with Minnesota's geography could find that suburb that had sprung up to accommodate affluent urban professionals in safe neighborhoods with good schools on a map. Worse still, those who could locate it on a map tended to automatically assume that he was a snob if that was one of the first, defining attributes he provided about himself. Over his years at the U, he had learned it was better to reveal his hometown only after he had given the person in question a chance to see that he wasn't the biggest snot east of Los Angeles and west of Manhattan. He wasn't ashamed of where he was from, but he wasn't about to set himself up to be a constant victim of stereotyping either.

"Who do you play for?" asked Herb, leaning casually against his stick.

Rob wondered when Herb would stop posing questions that he already knew the response to, and then pondered whether the question Herb had just asked was a trick, but, if it was, Rob couldn't spot the trap, so, waiting for the steel to bite into his skin, he replied, "For you, here at the U."

Herb hesitated for a few beats that were just long enough to tell Rob that he had failed whatever that last test had been about. That was bad, because Rob still did not understand how he had messed up. Should he have said, to avoid sounding like a new graduate who couldn't handle the pressure of life outside the insulated environment of the U, that he played for the Buffalo Sabres, even though he had only been drafted by them and hadn't yet played for them? Neither response made him sound like he did much more with his life than lounge around on his parents' sofa, watching television all day and mooching off their money. A woe of being a recent college graduate was that people inevitably expected you to make something of your life now that your expensive education was finally complete, and any answer you gave them tended to confirm their suspicions that you were rapidly becoming a lay-about who would cost the community thousands of dollars every year in welfare checks.

And, damn it, Herb was giving him a nice long time to revel in the idiocy of his answer, presumably so he could remember this moment and relate it to any future children he had to assure them they had inherited his brains if they ever came crying to him about something stupid they had done. Eventually, though, Herb would figure that Rob had absorbed just how wrong his answer had been, and then the clipped correction, which Rob was already bracing himself for, would come.

"Jack?" Herb prompted, twisting to face O'Callahan, and Rob recognized that the rebuke he had believed was incoming was not going to be launched at all.

"Jack O'Callahan." The Massachusetts boy's arrogant tone made it clear that he was condescending by giving his name at all. Bitterly, Rob thought that jackass was a better first name for O'Callahan.

"Charlestown, Mass.," continued O'Callahan, glaring at Rob, who glowered right back, hating everything about this cocky BU boy from his annoying accent to the way he abbreviated his home state, as if saying the full name would squander too much of his valuable time. "Boston University."

Herb, his lips pursed, didn't seem any more enamored of Jack's answer than he had been of Rob's. That meant that Rob and Jack were equal in that as well as in the enmity in which they held one another.

"Over here." Herb pointed his stick at Ralph Cox from the University of New Hampshire.

"I'm Ralph Cox." Ralph smiled and tipped his helmet as though it were a hat. "I'm from wherever's not gonna get me hit."

There was a ripple of amusement around the ice at this introduction, but Rob was too busy shooting daggers through his eyes at O'Callahan to join in the laughter.

"Very good." As if determined to end the levity before it had a chance to really get its feet off the ground, Herb shouted, "Everybody on the line, let's go!"

Rob stifled a groan as everyone skated over to the far goal line. From the moment he and O'Callahan had been ripped apart to stop them from tearing each other to pieces, he had known that this punishment would come sometime, because Herb was a fan of collective punishment. The theory was probably that since hockey was a team sport, the poor decisions of an individual hurt everybody. The practice was that either the problem player would feel sufficiently guilty about causing his entire team misery that he would take it upon himself to improve his behavior, or else the team as a whole would take responsibility for ensuring that whatever the issue was ceased.

Some teams, Rob knew, responded to collective punishment by treating whoever had brought on the discipline with vindictiveness and snubbing, but that had never been the case at the U. There players banded together, using their strengths to cover their teammates' weaknesses on the ice and in the locker room. That was how Rob had always ended up drawing color-coded weekly and monthly schedules for Don Micheletti, who had lockered next to him and seemed chronically incapable of arriving punctually for practice without this assistance. You became your brother's keeper pretty quickly when it was the sweat of your brow that partially paid for his shortcomings.

_I am sorry, guys, _Rob mentally apologized to his current team as they assembled on the line, _unless, of course, your name is Jack O'Callahan or Dave Silk. Then this is the very least you deserve, and I'm glad that I'm a much swifter skater than either of you, because that will make the upcoming Herbies much easier for me than for you. Please know that, as I watch you pant, I'll have the immense pleasure of reflecting that I was one of the skaters Herb timed to conclude that forty-five seconds was a 'reasonable' benchmark for this grueling drill. _


	2. Chapter 2

"_When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord asked Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?'_

_He answered, 'I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?'_

_The Lord said: 'What have you done? Listen: your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil'" _(Genesis 4:8-10, NAB).

Blood Cries Out

When Herb at last decided that everybody had sacrificed enough sweat to atone for Rob and Jack's fight, he called an end to practice. Rob looked forward to returning to the locker room along with the rest of the team to clean his still bloody face, take a cold shower, and ice his legs, but that wasn't to be—at least not right away, anyway—because Herb rapped out, "McClanahan, a word."

Convinced that it was utterly unfair for him to take the brunt of the blame for a fight that O'Callahan had started, Rob skated over to his coach as everyone else left the rink for the locker room.

"You were a member of the team I coached at the World Championships this summer," said Herb, arching an eyebrow at the baffled Rob, who felt that he should have anticipated that Herb's attack would come from an unexpected angle. "Stretch your brain and tell me whether you would describe the international style as cleaner or dirtier than the American one."

Thankfully, that was a question that Rob could answer without straining his alcohol-marinated mind. "Cleaner," he replied instantly.

"Correct." Herb nodded curtly. "And if you had to take a wild guess about whether the refs at the Olympics judge according the international or American rules, what would you say?"

"International," responded Rob, biting his lip, as he understood with a sinking feeling in his stomach where his coach was going with these pointed inquiries.

"Then perhaps you'd care to explain to me why you decided to work on being an enforcer, something, frankly, that you will never be even mediocre at, instead of your penalty kill, which someday might be halfway decent and useful to this team." Herb pressed his mouth into a thin, disapproving line. "Go ahead. Awe me with some insight into your tactical genius."

"You were there and saw what happened." Rob scowled. "O'Callahan took a cheap shot at me, and I didn't appreciate it. He started the fight, so you should ask _him _what his problem is."

"When I want your opinion on what I should do, Rob, I'll ask for it." Herb's face was as frigid as the ice upon which they stood. "And I don't care who started the fight, because O'Callahan would probably insist that _you _started it back in '76. All I care about is you ending your war with him peacefully."

"You expect me to apologize to _him_?" demanded Rob, letting the indignant emphasis on the final pronoun indicate that it, as far as he was concerned, could be replaced with a thousand insults. He hoped that this blatant scorn would demonstrate that he would sooner rip out his own tongue than use it to say he was sorry to Jack O'Callahan.

After all, any sane person would have recovered from the '76 final by going for a run at the gym to get an adrenaline high or by getting wasted at the bar to drown out the sad memory in a flagon of ale. A mildly neurotic being would have enrolled in anger management courses or grief counseling to learn to handle the overwhelming emotions of loss and resentment. Only a complete psychopath like O'Callahan would have nursed the grudge for four years and thrown an avenging cheap shot at the first opportunity. Rob was not going to apologize for the Boston boy's many mental issues, since he wasn't responsible for them.

"I expect you to do what you're told. I expect you to be a team player. I expect you to use the brain you'd like everyone to believe that you've got rolling around inside that helmet." His eyes sharp enough to slice diamonds, Herb knocked his knuckles against Rob's helmeted temples. It didn't hurt, but Rob couldn't prevent himself from flinching, because it was definitely an admonishment, not a gesture of affection. "I expect you to have the creativity and initiative to solve your own problems with O'Callahan, because if you don't, I'll make sure that you're his roommate for as long as you're on this team."

Rob's lips itched with the temptation to declare that he would room with Jack O'Callahan only if it were a specific stipulation made by someone who was holding a family member or close friend hostage. Only the sense in his gut that he had annoyed and disappointed Herb enough for one practice—or for one week really—made him say instead, "Got it, Coach."

Herb scrutinized Rob in a way that suggested he doubted the young man had the intelligence to truly understand what he claimed to, and then ordered brusquely, "Go clean yourself up then. You're a mess."

That was not exactly a surprise, because Rob would never have harbored under the misconception that he looked particularly dashing with blood from a smashed nose frozen on his cheeks. Still, he was glad to finally have a chance to leave the ice and tidy himself up. As he left the rink, he thought grimly, _I'll obey you, Herb, just like I did back in '76 when you shouted at our whole bench to go for the body, not the puck, and I did what you said, even though I was a scrawny freshman afraid of getting pounded on by everyone. I am what you make me, even if you expect me to apologize for what you told me to do, and, even though, speaking of apologies, I'll bet that you'll never say you're sorry to Coach Parker from BU for all the potshots you took at him in the press, calling him immature and saying it was all sour grapes…_

Almost at the locker room, Rob halted abruptly as it suddenly occurred to him that Herb hadn't actually said that he expected Rob to apologize to O'Callahan; he had just stated that he expected Rob to be creative and resolve his conflict with the most querulous BU boy. Smirking craftily, he reckoned that he could dump the hot potato into O'Callahan's lap by passing along Herb's threat. He did love when Herb gave his forwards free reign to be original and clever. _I am what you make me, Herb, _he thought again, his eyes glittering, _a threatener and a manipulator. _

As he rounded the corner that led into the locker room, he saw O'Callahan and Rizzo standing in the hallway, arms folded across their chests, in the midst of a vehement discussion.

"It's not fair to make your problem with Mac a problem for the whole team, OC," Rizzo was arguing, but he trailed off as soon as he caught sight of Rob.

"Look what vermin the cat dragged in," scoffed O'Callahan, rolling his eyes in a way that indicated Rob was about as welcome as gum rot.

"O'Callahan, Herb wants me to tell you that we'll be rooming together if we get in another fight," announced Rob coolly, deciding that he had a big enough card up his sleeve that he didn't need to respond to the BU boy's taunt.

"Who will room together?" O'Callahan's blue eyes blazed like the hottest part of a flame. "What are you going on about, McClanahan?"

"Traditionally, when a person employs the pronoun we, 'myself plus one or more others' is the intended meaning." Rob adopted his most condescending suburban tone, the one he would use if he was explaining table manners to a buffoon at a banquet who had just attempted to begin a food fight. "In this case, the myself is me, Rob McClanahan, and the other is you, Jack O'Callahan."

"I don't need a hick to define pronouns for me." O'Callahan's jaw clenched. "I'm not stupid. Harvard accepted me; I denied them."

"I'm sorry." Rob cocked an eyebrow, trying to act like he was unimpressed by this tidbit, although the nerd inside him was quite admiring. "Was that really supposed to be an argument that you aren't dumb? Only an idiot would turn down Harvard."

"Mac. OC." Rizzo shot them both a quelling look. "This isn't helping anything."

Ignoring Rizzo, O'Callahan said tersely to Rob, "Tell Herb that I'll room with you when the sun starts revolving around the Earth."

"I'm not a messenger boy." Rob rested his fists on his hips. "Tell him yourself, and I'll sell tickets to the show."

"Herb is a nutcase, and they just haven't found a loony bin crazy enough to take him," mumbled O'Callahan darkly, his forehead furrowing, but he made no movement that suggested he was eager to confront Brooks about this latest threat.

"OC, you can't just say that in front of someone who played for Brooks for your years—it's not polite," chided Rizzo, shaking his head. "Anyway, he's our coach now, too, so we should try for some respect and loyalty if we want to stay on this team for longer than it takes to carry our stuff out of the locker room."

"I don't need someone from Boston to tell me that Herb is a lunatic." Rob snorted, remembering how he had known after his very first practice as a Gopher that his coach was absolutely insane. That there was a method to Herb's madness that won championships did not make him less of a raving lunatic. "You BU boys can call him all the names you like, but chances are, unless they are some weird New England slang, we Minnesotans used them first."

"So you Minnesotans realized that Herb is crazy, and you went right on playing for him?" demanded O'Callahan, sounding as if he thought that this proved all the boys from the U had wood carvings for brains.

"Oh, and I'm sure that Coach Parker motivated you BU boys with cookies and hugs," Rob retorted. "Of course Herb is a jerk to his players. How do you think he won three championships for Minnesota in seven years when the school was ranked at the bottom of the Division before he came? Here's a hint: it involved a lot of terrorizing and conditioning."

"Maybe." Rizzo had the air of a person trying to bring some calm to a reeling conversation. "But I'm sure that he can't always be as bad as he was today."

"You're right," answered Rob, deadpan. "Normally, he's worse. He skates you until you're exhausted and about to collapse. Then he tells you something nuts—something you don't even want to waste energy trying to understand. That's what he wants. The more tired you are, the emptier you are, so he can fill you up with what he wants you to do and believe. He breaks you down and then he rebuilds you into his image of the ideal hockey player."

"Aren't we lucky?" Rizzo grimaced. "See, OC, this is why I think you should stop heaping extra punishments on us. Herb really doesn't need more reasons to make our lives miserable."

"I really wanted to win the NCAA Championship in '76. I rejected Harvard because I thought that I'd have a better shot at getting an NCAA ring with BU." O'Callahan seemed to be gnawing on the sides of his mouth, and Rob suddenly felt the first stirrings of empathy for this arrogant Boston defenseman.

He recalled, as if it were yesterday, how, during his senior year in high school, he had managed to bring his hockey team to the State Championships, but he hadn't been able to win there, although that was what a talented Minnesota high school hockey player was supposed to do. For weeks after the defeat, he had wanted to do nothing more than hunch in a ball on his bed, hating himself for letting down his entire town and loathing Steve Christoff, the rival forward who had stolen the title that should have been his. He remembered how every soothing word from his parents or brothers had only reopened the gaping wound where his heart should have been, and how every pat on the back he got from his neighbors only made him want to punch something. It was embarrassing to lose an important game, but it was even more humiliating to be comforted afterward.

He had only begun to recover from the agony of his failure at the State Championships when he had arrived at the U to discover that he was expected to cooperate with Steve Christoff, the one who had robbed him of the glory that should have been his—that he had worked toward since his freshman year of high school. It had been almost a relief to learn that Christoff did not want to work well with him, either.

When Herb had placed him and Christoff on the same line in one of their early games, Christoff had hogged the puck even when Rob was open, resulting in a turnover. Rob had confronted Christoff about this on the bench at the end of their shift, hissing that Christoff wasn't good enough to win games all by himself, and Christoff had volleyed back that he didn't need advice from someone who was a worse player than him. The entire debate had been conducted in whispers when they thought that Herb wasn't listening, but, in hindsight, Rob suspected that they had been about as covert as a water buffalo giving birth over a PA system.

The tension between them had come to a peak when they had taken their next shift. Christoff had fired a shot that showed every sign of sliding smoothly into the net, and Rob had glided in, using his stick to send the puck sailing into the goal. Then, wearing his finest North Oaks smile as if he had no clue that he had just ruined Christoff's day, Rob had spun around and thanked Steve for the assist. A vein on the verge of explosion had throbbed in Steve's neck, and Rob had feared that he would receive a black eye, but, after a moment of glaring, Steve had burst out laughing. It was then that Rob had recognized that Steve Christoff, the young man all the Minnesota papers had portrayed as his greatest enemy, actually had all the qualities that he sought in potential best friends. That was when the rivalry between Christoff and McClanahan had finally subsided, and the friendship started. Rob was still enjoying that friendship far more than he ever had their rivalry.

"You did win an NCAA ring with BU in '78," Rob reminded O'Callahan in a hushed voice, not wanting the fragile understanding he was beginning to have of Jack to shatter. Surely, though they seemed so different on the surface, they had to be similar deep inside them. Both of them had to know the aching desire to win and the heart-stopping hurt of losing.

Biting his lip, he went on, "Look, I know how it feels to be denied a victory that you worked to have for years, okay? In Minnesota, winning the high school State Championships in hockey is very important, and I was supposed to do that for myself and for my town. I took my team to States, but I couldn't win there, and then I was expected to play nice at the U with Steve Christoff, the boy who took away my title. That was incredibly difficult at first, but I learned to do it, because I couldn't let a past failure stand in the way of future success."

"People say that you're the best two-way player in college hockey," remarked OC, eyeing Rob in a speculative fashion that offered a cessation of hostilities even if it didn't promise friendship.

"I try my best." Rob shrugged, thinking that he still ended up off-sides more than he would have liked when he fell back to help in the defensive zone, but he also knew that Herb would not consistently play him as a penalty killer if he weren't a strong two-way player.

"Well, I'll try my best not to hit you when you fall back into the defensive zone." OC gave a quarter moon grin.

"Sounds good." Rob smiled, accepting the peace offering and making one of his own by adding, "If you're interested, the trick to surviving Herbies is going as fast as you can, so you maximize the amount of time you spend on the line, catching your breath. You also don't want to pant—breathe evenly through your nose—because when you pant, you make yourself feel more tired and short of oxygen. Like suicides in any sport, Herbies are about speed and endurance."

"I'll keep that in mind." OC nodded, and then said grudgingly, "I'm sorry about giving you a nose bleed."

"Ah, my sinuses needed to be cleared out anyway." Determined to forget and forgive, Rob waved a dismissive hand as though he had barely noticed his bloody nose.

"And your nose does look better like that," OC teased, but his tone was devoid of any real mockery.

"Right." Rob rolled his eyes. "Comments like that are why New York and Hollywood are regarded as centers of American fashion, not Boston."

"I can't do anything about the rest of America's poor taste." OC gave another one of his trademark cocky smiles, but, this time, Rob didn't have the urge to punch it off his face.

Rivalries, he decided, were such delicate things. They could be killed by a flicker of understanding or a quick smile. Then, instead of looking at an opponent, you found yourself staring into the gleaming eyes of a teammate who might one day become a friend.


End file.
